


For Better or Worse

by cynthia_arrow (thesilverarrow)



Series: Some Lost ficlets [6]
Category: Lost
Genre: Gen, Season/Series 03
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-17
Updated: 2016-01-17
Packaged: 2018-05-14 10:45:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 768
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5740702
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesilverarrow/pseuds/cynthia_arrow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>He thinks the most about Boone.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	For Better or Worse

**Author's Note:**

> (Originally posted to livejournal, 2007.)

Jack hates this underground prison they've put him in. It makes him think too much about his life, but it also makes him think about the people on the other side of the island, what they're doing and how they're muddling through without him. For better or worse, he is their leader, and he can't help but wonder how they'll manage to keep this island at bay without him. It gets to be too much, though, worrying over them, so he begins to think about the ones who are utterly untouched by the island, even though their bodies are surrounded by it, buried in it. Those are the ones he can't worry over anymore, only mourn.  
  
He thinks the most about Boone, and not just because he looked into his impossibly blue eyes as he watched the light go out of them. It's because of how he remembers the aftermath of the crash, the insane blur of people screaming, smoke choking him, a pain in his side that felt like it was always on the verge of rending him in two. He can't remember many specifics from that day anymore, thankfully, only a massive overload of adrenaline somehow pulling him through a nightmare. But he does remember the few people whose eyes he looked into, who he had to stop and really get the attention of as he bounced between calamities. Boone was one of those people, and he thinks it's funny how the crash seemed to distill the man down to an essence, his actions there on the beach a perfect and bitter reflection of who he was and perhaps why he died.  
  
When he thinks about Boone, he sees a striking kid in a disheveled blue shirt, utterly focused on doing CPR…and doing it all wrong. When he watched Boone in the days to come, with Shannon, it was like he sometimes didn't recognize him. In his mind, the boy wasn't that doormat, he was instead the epitome of stupid and stupidly brave, just like the day he went into the ocean after Joanna and almost didn't come back out. Boone was a little cocky, but not because he was an asshole. It's just that world had taught him to be sure of himself, at least where he could get away with it.  
  
But for most things, though Boone might've snarled a bit, underneath it all he was waiting for a hand to smooth him down, reassure him and tell him what to do. Jack supposed that, really, Boone was just as much that man he saw with Shannon every day as he was the inept lifeguard who chose to do something after the crash rather than nothing. Jack couldn't fault him for that. He probably would have been in the same position if he wasn't who he was. He would have been helping others the best way he knew how, even if he fucked it up. And he would have been just as easily run off to fetch an ink pen because someone firm and serious told him to.  
  
Even though Jack had just been trying to get rid of him, Boone had taken that command in earnest. It taught Jack to be earnest too--to wield his power without bitterness, to fight to survive rather than haul himself, defeated, across the beach day after day, resenting that they all looked to him to be something he didn't think he could be. It didn't matter if he wanted the responsibility or not; he was apparently capable, so he did it. He still resents it somtimes, but at least now he sees the beauty in it. That day, it was as sudden as Boone's sincere face as he interrupted him on the verge of falling apart; every day now, it's as absurd and unavoidable as Boone's handful of inkpens, this way he's become who he is: a man who can cast the doubt and fear out of his mind when he needs to, who sits with his back straight against the walls of his makeshift cell, ready.  
  
But Jack doesn't for a minute forget that Boone's ability to take commands--from him, from John--is why he's gone. Gone when he had so much left to do and be. Jack has a life left to live, too, and he does pause to think about himself. But mostly he thinks about the rest of them, especially those that followed him here. He doesn't plan to lose anyone else under his watch. What he plans to do is find a way out of this, whatever it takes.


End file.
